Tuesday, March 19, 2013

If you wanted to see the most similar races to the 1907 and 1908 gran prix of England, Germany, and France, you might look at the 1968 movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

after the racing beginning, then the movie gets into the affect of racing... one car, the winner of the 1907 and 1908 Gran Prix racing series, was in a wreck, and burned. It ends up in a mechanics yard, and the neighborhood kids play on it, cajole their eccentric inventor father (Dick Van Dyke) into getting them the car, he fixes it up, and then every 2 minutes is another musical or song and dance number.

Here he is bringing the old race car home

working on it in the garage

and presto-chango, one perfect boat tailed skiff

the love interest, she drives her own cool old brass era car

until they fall in love and go for drives in the country (Below)

and then the plot of the 2nd half (after intermission) is that they go rescue grandpa from a castle

I can not make out the brass script on the radiator, St Louis maybe?

and they make this cool car fall apart.

Of course, you can see the support beams coming out of the floor.

Written by Ian Fleming, screenplay adaptation by Rould Dahl, and made 4 years after Mary Poppins, it looks like a copy of Mary Poppins and even has Dick Van Dyke. So if you loved Mary, you'll like this one.